"Motive, huh?"
Minamoto Soujun grew serious.
He thought of his past life.
As one more cog in the corporate grind, he died suddenly before fifty. It was not entirely unexpected. He had felt it coming.
He often pulled all-nighters and worked overtime. Sometimes his heart would clench without warning, and now and then there was a stabbing pain.
Heart trouble is no small matter. He sensed what it meant and braced himself mentally.
He did not dwell on it, because he did not really care. He never aimed to live to a hundred. Seventy or so would have been fine. At least then the social insurance he paid would not feel wasted. Yet he did not even reach fifty. In the end it really was sudden death.
Expected, yet still unexpected.
Hoo.
Soujun let out a long, pent-up breath.
He looked at his hands. Long fingers, clean joints, neatly trimmed nails with a healthy pale pink sheen.
He thought of training.
The first time he stood in the ring to spar, his blood boiled and his hands would not stop shaking.
That stress response told him plainly:
This is your thing. You have violence in your blood.
Soujun did not reject it, because that violence was completely under control. When he needed to be quiet, he could settle. When he moved, he could turn fierce.
He learned fast. That was not only his innate technique at work. He had real talent.
He had the ability, so he should become stronger than anyone, and protect the people he cares about.
What he wanted was simple. What he does not want, no one gets to force on him.
With that, he set the old self aside. No need to linger on who he had been. No need to overthink who he should become.
He would do a better job of being himself, not chase a better version of himself.
His worth would be decided by him.
He raised his head and looked straight at Yaga Masamichi. "I want to learn jujutsu, learn how to exorcise curses, then become the strongest and protect the people around me."
Yaga studied him and murmured without thinking,
"The strongest, and to protect, is it?"
It sounded like he was speaking to Soujun, and also like he was speaking to himself.
He neither endorsed nor rejected the answer. He did not linger on it and continued,
"Starting today, at the same time each week, I will teach you how to become a qualified sorcerer."
His posture relaxed. The severity from moments ago eased.
"For a sorcerer, the most important thing is cursed energy. Everyone has a ceiling set by talent. But you are young and have plenty of room to grow. So the first thing you must learn is how to refine cursed energy."
"How do I refine it?" Soujun did not know the method. Until now he consumed his cursed energy, let it recover naturally, consumed it again, and repeated that cycle so his reserves grew slowly over time.
"When emotion fluctuates strongly, cursed energy drains for nothing. So you must learn to control your emotions, or rather, learn to control cursed energy amid emotional swings so it does not leak," Yaga said, raising a palm. A wisp of cursed energy wrapped his hand gently and flowed there.
"What you need to do is draw cursed energy out of faint sparks of emotion. You can deliberately seek stimuli to stir your feelings and create fluctuations."
He flicked his hand and the cursed energy dispersed.
"Your turn. Try it."
Yaga lifted his teacup and drank, giving Soujun time to think and test.
Soujun had long stockpiled ideas but lacked an entry point. Now that someone was leading the way, he was eager to start.
Yaga had been detailed. In short:
Stir emotion, generate cursed energy, refine cursed energy.
The jujutsu world is full of curses, but those are not yours. Sorcerers rely more on producing and using their own.
Cursed energy born of emotion will drain away if ignored. Only by actively refining it does it truly become yours.
Soujun realized he already met most conditions.
At every step, the key point was control.
On control, he had a lot to say. Cursed energy answered him like an arm to a hand.
Emotion as well.
Anyone who has taken high school biology knows this:
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter. When it is low, apathy, anxiety, and tension show up.
Adrenaline at higher levels makes people irritable and quick to anger.
Serotonin shortages bring depression and impulsivity.
There were many levers to pull, far too many.
But humans have evolved into highly precise systems. Tweak one thing and everything moves. He had to be careful.
He focused and began to experiment.
First he lowered dopamine to the minimum of the normal range.
Soon his perfect self-control let him feel a faint tension. It was too weak to generate cursed energy.
Then he adjusted other hormones, still only within normal limits.
Emotions began to stack. He felt anger and irritability, and at the same time a touch of depression and gloom.
Still not enough.
Soujun turned to his soul.
What does the soul look like when tense, when angry, when disgusted, when steeped in hate?
If he shaped the soul to match, would the corresponding emotions arise?
His innate technique made fine control easy. Working together, body, soul, and chemistry amplified the negative emotions.
His state grew strange. Emotions piled up and even clashed with one another, yet he remained absolutely lucid, as if standing outside it all with his hands on the controls.
So he pressed the negative emotions harder.
Then he saw cursed energy.
Half of it belonged to him, half to the jujutsu world. Then that split shifted to full ownership. His reserves increased.
Yaga had been watching. He saw Soujun sink into thought, then sit upright as his body began to change:
Muscles tense, fists clenched, a dark expression, a heavy, negative air rolling off him. The world is pointless, let it all burn, everyone can just die.
Yaga let himself sink into the pressure. His own mood dipped and turned angry, then irritable, then bleak.
In short order cursed energy surfaced, then gentled, then settled and circulated tamely inside Soujun.
Yaga clicked his tongue in admiration.
Across from him, the boy held the refining state, body taut as a bowstring. He slowly raised his head, eyes cold and fierce.
"So, this counts as having learned it, right?"
"…"
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